With billions of unique, publicly accessible World Wide Web (web) pages available and millions more added each day, a web user relies on search engines and bookmarks to navigate and recall relevant topics. A browser or Internet user may also wish to personalize their searches and navigation and share the personalization with other users. Further, applications may aid the browser to more smartly navigate the web to locate topics of interest.
A variety of approaches exist for a web user to search and summarize relevant web pages and to collaborate with other web users. For example, Clipmarks is a user-powered news and knowledge web site. Clipmarks users post interesting bits of information they find on the web to a community web page and the Clipmarks community users determine which bits of information get the most visibility by “popping” their favorites bits to the top of a prioritized community list. Instead of posting links to entire web pages, a clipping tool permits users extract pieces of compelling content from within pages and post those select pieces for everyone to see. For example, only clips that are under 2,000 characters can get on the Clipmarks homepage for other users to view.
Kaboodle allows users to capture anything found on a web page with one mouse click. An information extraction technology summarizes what the user has captured and thereafter allows the user to organize the summaries on a single, separate web page (e.g., available from the Kaboodle home page). The user may also share their Kaboodle page with other users. Users viewing a Kaboodle page may post comments on the page.
Claria PersonalWeb automatically creates a personalized web home page for a user. As the user surfs the web, the user teaches PersonalWeb content in which the user is interested. Based on the accumulated interests, PersonalWeb builds a personalized page containing links to web content related to those interests. The more the user surfs the web, the more knowledge PersonalWeb gains to generate a web home page with links to content relevant to the user.
Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website that allows users to store their bookmarks online for retrieval from any computer and to add bookmarks from any computer. The bookmarks may be organized with content-based bubbles. Further, the bookmarks may be shared with other users and other users' bookmarks may be searched.
MyStickies is a web based application that allows a user to add virtual sticky notes to any existing web page. When the user returns to the page, the sticky note appears to the user in the location it was created. The sticky notes are all available separately in an account area and can be edited, deleted, and used to link to the web pages where they are posted. The sticky notes may further be tagged with a descriptive category so that the sticky notes (and the pages on which they appear) may be organized by the user according to category.
The present inventors have identified a need for an improved web navigational and personalization scheme.